How Harvard University Censored the Biography of William James

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How Harvard University Censored the Biography of William James

an open letter to Psychology Professor Matthew K. Nock

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 11, 2025

Dear Professor Nock ¹,

I am writing to suggest that Harvard make some reference to William James' views regarding laughing gas and the 'anesthetic revelation ² ' in your online biography of the man at

https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/william-james ³

James urged philosophers to use such substances to study reality ⁴, and Harvard's omission of that fact reads to me like academic censorship on behalf of Drug War sensibilities ⁵. As someone who has written literally hundreds of essays on such topics, I am convinced that the Drug War ideology of substance demonization leads to suicides by denying fast-working feel-good medicine like laughing gas to the severely depressed -- under the apparent theory that suicide ⁶ is actually better than 'drug use.'⁷ In the same way, we use brain-damaging shock therapy on the depressed, apparently under the view that it is better to damage their brains than to let them use 'drugs.'⁸

Is this not insanity itself?

The fact is that there are hundreds of drugs that elate and inspire, some of which have almost NO addictive potential whatsoever (like the phenethylamines of Alexander Shulgin ⁹) - and yet Drug Warriors are implicitly telling us that death is preferable to their use - death -- this despite the fact that Big Pharma drugs advertised on prime-time television report death itself as a potential side effect. Besides, surely even chemical dependency is better than the death of a suicidal individual. Americans clearly think so, insofar as 1 in 4 American women take a Big Pharma ¹⁰ ¹¹ drug every day of their life.

I guess we must abide by tyrannous drug laws, but that does not mean that we have to rewrite history to make it seem like those laws are just, or that the Drug War is some sort of natural baseline from which to study mind and mood. Nothing could be further from the truth. So I urge you to revise Harvard's online biography of William James to mention his work with laughing gas .

Sincerely Yours.

PS I write because I have a suicidal relative who recently visited the ER for severe depression - and it frustrates me that the modern protocol is to withhold from her anything that would clearly work. It seems to me that the modern physician's job is first and foremost to vindicate the materialist approach to mind and mood medicine (by prescribing 'meds' inspired by the doctrines of reductionism and behaviorism) and only secondarily to help the suicidal. But the suicidal need decisive help NOW, in the form of rapid-acting elation and inspiration, not theoretical help that might kick in, more or less, in a month or two if they're lucky.

PPS I am the only philosopher who has formally protested the FDA's recent plan to treat laughing gas as a 'drug.' I did this out of respect for William James and on behalf of academic freedom. I tried to encourage some Harvard philosophers to join me, but no luck. This is why I was disturbed to see that the Harvard bio of William James does not even mention laughing gas ¹² . I fear that the Drug War has led to censorship at Harvard, or at least to self-censorship.

PPPS I should add that I am a 66-year-old philosophy major and chronic depressive. I have published hundreds of philosophical essays against the War on Drugs over the last six years at abolishthedea.com. During that time, I have written hundreds of personal letters to American and British philosophers on this subject and have yet to receive a reply from any of them. It seems to be 'more than people's jobs are worth' to discuss the philosophy of drug use - or to criticize the role of materialist science when it comes to mind and mood medicine -- but if you're an exception to this rule, I invite you to visit my site. My most recent essay on these topics is entitled: 'How the Myth of Mental Illness Supports the War On Drugs'¹³ (link below). I share physicist David Bohm's concern that modern psychology is still under the obsolete thrall of behaviorism, thanks to which it ignores all positive uses of drugs - whether suggested by anecdote, history and/or the common-sense motivations of incentives and anticipation. In this way, our modern psychologists give a veneer of 'science' to the DEA's lie that time-honored medicines have no positive uses whatsoever, even though drugs like Soma, coca and opium ¹⁴ have helped inspire entire religions in the past ¹⁵ ¹⁶.

https://www.abolishthedea.com/how_the_myth_of_mental_illness_supports_the_war_on_drugs.php

Author's Follow-up: March 31, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

Are you sitting down?

You will never believe this, but Professor Nock has not yet seen fit to vouchsafe me a response viz. my scruples about Harvard censorship. To be fair, however, I imagine that he's struggling with the issue. I can sense that he is losing sleep over the implicit message that he might be sending via a non-response. "Shall I stop ghosting Brian and face Drug War censorship head on," quoth Matt, "or shall I not rather steer the course of mainstream propriety and continue pretending that Drug War prohibitions represent a natural baseline from which to study reality?"

Wait, the vision is becoming clearer. I see a wife... or a significant other of some kind... approaching our Matt.

"Stop beating yourself up," quoth he... or is it a she... or even a they? "Brian cannot expect you to discuss drug-related issues openly with him -- especially given the fact that he lacks the tenured status that, time out of mind, has constituted the minimum entry-level barrier for access to the Ivory Tower stalwart. And believe me, mister, you are as stalwart as it comes when it comes to the Ivory Tower, or my name is not..." ...whatever his or her name is, which, I cannot quite make out that level of detail in my otherwise inspired reveries. "I mean, look at you, you are chairperson of the Harvard Psychology Department, for Peter's sake!"

But what's this?

I see Matt shaking his head with doleful vigor, as who should say, "Yes, but do I deserve my status, given the fact that I am brazenly ignoring the psychoactive legacy of the very man thanks to whom I have this job?!"

It makes one feel kind of bad, to be putting our professor through this probable wringer -- to be forcing him to face these probable demons and to catechize himself in these probably derisive terms.

Why, it's probably terrible of me!

Notes:

1: Professor Matthew K. Nock, Department Chair, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, DIB Committee Co-Chair, Harvard University (up)
2: The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy DWP (up)
3: anesthetic revelation (up)
4: Will to Believe James, William (up)
5: Coverup on Campus DWP (up)
6: Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use DWP (up)
7: Suicide and the Drug War DWP (up)
8: Electroshock Therapy and the Drug War DWP (up)
9: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)
10: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
11: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
12: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
13: How the Myth of Mental Illness supports the war on drugs DWP (up)
14: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
15: How psychologists gaslight us about beneficial drug use DWP (up)
16: anesthetic revelation (up)

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SWAT raids have increased by 15,000 percent from the late 1970s to today, resulting in 50,000 to 80,000 SWAT raids annually in the US alone. --War On Us

Drug warriors aren't just deciding for us about drugs. They're telling us that we no longer need Coleridge poems, Lovecraft stories, Robin Williams, Sherlock Holmes, or the soma-inspired Hindu religion.

Countless millions suffer needlessly in silence because of America's fearmongering about drugs.

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UNESCO celebrates the healing practices of the Kallawaya people of South America. What hypocrisy! UNESCO supports a drug war that makes some of those practices illegal!

"If England [were to] revert to pre-war conditions, when any responsible person, by signing his name in a book, could buy drugs at a fair profit on cost price... the whole underground traffic would disappear like a bad dream." -- Aleister Crowley

Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.

Well, today's Oregon vote scuttles any ideas I might have entertained about retiring in Oregon.

Peyote advocates should be drug legalization advocates. Otherwise, they're involved in special pleading which is bound to result in absurd laws, such as "Plant A can be used in a religion but not plant B," or "Person A can belong to such a religion but person B cannot."

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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How Harvard University Censored the Biography of William James

an open letter to Psychology Professor Matthew K. Nock

Author's Follow-up: March 31, 2025

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

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